Reflections: Social Justice and the Cause of Christ

Two things happened last week back where most of you live that resonated strongly with what we’re living here. First, Glen Beck equated a Christian concern with social or economic justice with communism and Nazism, told “other Christians” that social justice is a perversion of the gospel, and then told Christians to leave churches that talked about it. This was, as is typical of extremist entertainers with neither sense nor integrity on both sides of the political spectrum from Michael Moore to Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh, accompanied by a series of fear-mongering statements about how your religious beliefs would soon be under attack because of liberal concepts like these.


One commentator I read said that statements like these put Glen Beck right up there with Howard Stern in the “not-for-Christian-consumption-category.” I guess that’s for each of us to decide on our own. But I’ll tell you what, it makes me pretty upset to hear my Jesus, who cited Isaiah 61 in a declaration of the Year of Jubilee as his foundational programmatic statement in Luke 4, spit upon by the likes of Beck. Because let’s be honest, that’s what’s happening here. But since I already put Pat Robertson through the ringer earlier this year, maybe now is a good time to look at the bigger picture: God’s Word is being constantly perverted on every side in our public discourse, at least as often among our “political allies” as among our “political enemies.”

My church home back in Memphis is fairly conservative politically. I’m guessing we’re a majority Republican bunch. We have orthodox views of Scripture and of economics. But I’ll tell you what, we preach social justice. I grew up learning about social justice in the pulpit and in the youth lounge. And even a cursory reading of the Bible proves that Beck isn’t just a little skewed . . . he’s actually striking at the heart of the Biblical narrative. Which is what is so scary. Because here’s a political figure, appealing to you and me as believers from the political perspective that most of us maintain, to say utterly sinful, ridiculous, unbiblical things about our God. Here’s a guy on what is for most of us traditionally “our side” appealing to our religious values in a way that our Biblical churches would decry as horribly unbiblical. How about this: if your church does not talk about social and economic justice, you should change it (not leave it, that’s only more pseudo-Christianity of the worst kind), because your church is blatantly and objectively unbiblical.

So point one: I don’t think all of our political or social commentators have to be believers to be listened to. But we’ve got to hold those who do claim Christ accountable to represent Jesus as He comes to us in the Scriptures. Too many of our so called “conservative” spokespeople are ravaging the gospel in public discourse, hiding all the while behind the guise of “family values.” As if social and economic justice isn’t at the heart of family values.

So the discourse needs to change. But now I’m going to really turn up the heat: so does the political action. This past week, one of my U.S. Senators and the former mayor of Chattanooga, Bob Corker used his position as one of the Senators working on financial regulation to push for looser standards for payday lending companies like Check Into Cash. Let me say that again: Corker is working on a bill to put tougher regulation on lending companies, but now, he’s pushing for a special exemption for payday loan groups. In college, I spent a great deal of time researching this industry and even raising awareness about its evils among local communities. Payday lending makes loans with annual interest rates of around 400% to over 12 million Americans nation wide every year. They open around poor minority communities and military bases en masse, targeting those most likely to be in need of a crisis loan. They are also tremendously powerful lobbyists, and the owner of Check Into Cash, who is a friend of Senator Corker has given money regularly to his campaigns from the mayoral election to the present.

In college and afterwards, my friends and I talked to inner-city pastors and community members in both Memphis and Chattanooga (constituents in other words) who said that payday lending was a major threat to many of their members. I talked to politicians who told me that despite increased regulation at that time, it was still a dangerous industry for the poor. But those folks don’t have the money or political capital to lobby Mr. Corker’s office, I suppose.

Bob Corker was a regular attendee at my home church in Chattanooga. Bob Corker ran on a platform of family values and is well liked. I’m sure we agree on numerous issues, and that he is a brother in Christ who has done much good for the world. But that rhetoric from Beck, that overly-individualized, unbiblical, unChrist-like theology that we might be tempted to write off as over-the-top has gone deeper than we might think. I’m guessing Bob Corker has done what so much of so called Christian America has done: put the Bible and all it says behind the doors of our home and tried to figure out how to live “in the real world” on our own steam. Because here’s a politician elected partially because of his religious values taking a stand against legislation that would objectively help the poor, and claiming the Christ who came “to preach good news to the poor” as his guide and God.

What are religious values? What would Jesus do? I would suggest that many of our politicians, even ones with authentic faith relationships with Christ, have horribly unbiblical answers to this very question. The political debates of our day are using and abusing the person of Jesus, they are making idols after our Lord’s own image to be the false gods for a whole host of various political platforms that often have no relation or even an antithetical relation to the real agenda of our Savior. This week I wrote Senator Corker and told him that as a brother in Christ and a member of his constituency that I would do everything in my power to let other members of his constituency know about this anti-poor legislation and encourage all of them to call in, write in, and vote differently if necessary to get the point across (thus, this blog post).

Because the truth is, if Beck is right, all community development workers, all pastors concerned with helping the poor, every social activist pursuing moral and just society, and every person convicted about the need for both racial and socio-economic reconciliation is out of a job and a calling. But then again, if Beck is right, Yahweh God at Sinai, all of the Biblical Prophets, and Jesus are all out of a job as well. Because our pursuit of social or economic justice is derived from the words and actions of God’s prophets and of God’s own actions in the Old and New Testament and in the life of Jesus Himself. And to close in such as a way to prove that at the end of the day we “social justice” Christians really do believe in the real gospel, how about us? How about me? Have I really let the poor into my life? Have I carried my poor brothers and sisters’ burdens as my own? Are we mourning with those who mourn? Are we crying out with Amos that justice would roll down like waters . . . in our own hearts and lives and actions? There’s a lie out there: that Christ may save my soul, but he doesn’t have much to say about society, justice, peace, and the rest of the things that the Bible’s pages are filled with. To worship a Jesus like that is to worship a Jesus that is an idol, and nowhere to be found in the Christian Scriptures or in the church, a Jesus who saves my soul from hell in the afterlife, and leaves my life in society to be lived however I see fit. Let’s beat that lie and reject that idol. Let’s live the truth of Jubilee, the truth of the gleaning laws, the truth of Jesus. And maybe that might include turning Beck off and writing Bob.

Peace,
Michael Rhodes


See for details on Corker's involvement and the state of the bill currently: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/03/10/business/10regulate.html?hp